Revising Mr. Lincoln: a new debate bursts out--Jay Winik and Dinesh D'Souza assess it.

Bending Fate to A Higher Purpose

Late March of 1865. So anxious was Abraham Lincoln about ending the Civil War that, when he received word of Robert E. Lee's bold but failed attempt to break through Ulysses S. Grant's lines outside Petersburg, the President rushed off to see the battlefield himself. From inside a slow-rolling train, Lincoln gazed morosely at the hideous remnants of war: carcasses of army horses, trees splintered by military fire, flocks of buzzards hovering over the fields. The earth lay blackened, and in every direction it seemed mutilated corpses were being carried off for burial.

Lincoln surely felt some satisfaction over the morning's exhilarating victory and its portents for a quicker end to the conflict. But this was quickly mitigated by a line of Rebel prisoners that crossed his view. He commented on the "sad condition" of these exhausted opponents, adding quietly that he "had seen enough of the horrors of war," and that he hoped this "was the beginning of the end." In this moment we see vintage Lincoln: the humanity, the tenderness, and a rare capacity to embrace the enemy as his own.

And yet, there is another Lincoln, one captured in an image of several weeks earlier. It speaks of something different: of a man of steel and grit, of what some might see as a darker side. In February of 1865--just before calling in his Second Inaugural for "malice toward none" and "charity for all"--Lincoln held a peace conference with three Confederate representatives, including CSA vice president Alexander Stephens. At that moment, Lincoln was the very picture of exhaustion: his face heavily lined, his cheeks sunken, having lost 30 pounds in recent months. Stephens, who had served with Lincoln in Congress, stated: "Mr. President, if we understand you correctly, you think we of the Confederacy have committed treason; that we are traitors to your government; that we have forfeited our rights and are proper subjects for the hangman."

"Yes," Lincoln responded rather icily, "that is about the size of it ..."

Which of these images, the sympathetic, caring sufferer or the cool realist, was the real Abraham Lincoln?

By most measures, Lincoln's lofty position in American history seems undentable. He saved the Union, freed the slaves, knit the country together toward war's end, and gave a new birth to freedom. He penned addresses that will reside forever in the nation's memory. He died a martyr. Lincoln seems to rise above other Presidents onto a different moral plane, becoming a near Christ-like figure, the closest to a saint as exists in our national consciousness.